Happy May, y’all. Here’s to hoping the weekend’s April showers will bring May flowers. Today’s newsletter top was reported with Theodoric Meyer, co-author of The Early 202. Not a subscriber? Sign-up here.
House Republicans grapple with how far to go on abortion
When Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) ran for reelection last year, he earned the endorsement of SBA Pro-Life America, a leading antiabortion group, which hailed him for voting “consistently to defend the lives of the unborn.”
But SBA is unlikely to endorse Garcia in his next reelection campaign.
That’s because the influential group will no longer back House or Senate candidates who don’t support legislation that would prohibit most abortions at 15 weeks, Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president, told Theodoric last week — the same standard SBA is applying to presidential candidates.
- The group’s decision creates a new litmus test for antiabortion lawmakers that many of them might not pass. Just 101 House Republicans — less than half of the conference — co-sponsored a bill last year introduced by Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) to restrict abortion nationwide at 15 weeks gestation.
While some Republicans might support the bill even though they didn’t sign on, others say it’s a bridge too far.
“I don’t think it’s our role in Congress at the federal level to have discussions on the topic, frankly,” Garcia, who represents a district in the Los Angeles suburbs that President Biden carried, told us. “It’s a states' rights issue.”
Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.), a freshman who narrowly won a swing seat last year with SBA’s endorsement, said in September that he would vote against a 15-week ban. He referred questions about his stance on Friday to his office, which didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Swing state supporters
Other Republicans in swing districts who secured SBA’s endorsement last year back the 15-week bill.
For instance: Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who represents a district Biden carried in 2020, co-sponsored Smith’s bill last year and said he thought it remained popular among his constituents.
Rep. Zachary Nunn (R-Iowa), a freshman who represents a swing district, did not directly answer whether he supported a 15-week federal limit in a brief interview on Thursday but encouraged us to look at his voting record in the Iowa state legislature. He voted in 2018 to bar abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected, with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother.
- Democrats, who credit the backlash against the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Roe v. Wade with helping them to overperform in the midterms, are eager to go after vulnerable Republicans who support Smith’s bill — but they’ll also attack Republicans in swing districts who don’t back Smith’s bill over their support for other antiabortion measures.
- “Vulnerable House Republicans have already made their extreme anti-choice records clear, and this new litmus test is just another reminder that they are out-of-touch with the majority of Americans,” Courtney Rice, a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman, said in a statement.
SBA’s shift comes as Republicans in Congress and around the country struggle to figure out how far to go in imposing new abortion restrictions 10 months after the Supreme Court’s decision. Lawmakers in South Carolina failed to pass a near-total ban on abortion on Thursday, hours before Nebraska state Sen. Merv Riepe, a longtime Republican, derailed a bill prohibiting most abortions at around six weeks in his state.
Hyde and seek
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), meanwhile, pledged in December to bring a bill codifying the Hyde Amendment — which restricts federal funds from being used to pay for most abortions — to the floor within two weeks of Republicans regaining the majority.
He still has not done so, which has led to criticism from some antiabortion advocates.
- “I think it’s very weak that they didn’t,” Dannenfelser said, referring to House Republican leaders, though she added that she’s grateful for the antiabortion bills Republicans have voted on.
- “It was disappointing to see Congress not pass these common-sense protections yet,” said Roger Severino, a vice president at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, who served in the Trump administration. “After the 50-year fight to overturn Roe, now is the time for pro-life politicians to follow through on their long-standing commitments.”
Smith, who introduced the Hyde Amendment bill, said he has spoken to Republican leadership about it and is confident they’ll bring it up for a vote. “It’s a matter of when and not if,” he said. (Scalise’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
But even some of the bill’s co-sponsors worry about the politics of bringing it up for a vote right now.
- “I support it,” said Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.). “I’m a co-sponsor of it. It’s got all the exceptions [for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother]. But I think it sends the wrong message right now.”
- “We need to balance out, from a policy perspective, protecting the right to life and protecting women’s rights,” she added.
15-week proposals
The road ahead for Smith’s 15-week abortion bill is even rockier.
Smith and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who introduced the Senate version of the bill last year, told us they planned to reintroduce their proposals later this year, although they didn’t specify when.
Mace, whom SBA endorsed in 2020 but not last year, bristled at the group’s plan not to back lawmakers who don’t sign onto such a ban.
- “It’s ironic, because SBA just two years ago was endorsing a 20-week ban,” Mace said. “So they’re moving the goal posts,” using an expletive to describe what she thought of moving the goal posts.
But Dannenfelser described the 15-week limit as a “very modest piece of legislation” and said she couldn’t credibly ask antiabortion voters to back candidates who don’t support it now that Roe is gone.
“It wouldn’t be credible for us to even do, even if we wanted to,” she said.
Industry Rx
Moderna’s billionaire CEO reaped nearly $400 million last year. Then he got a raise.
Stéphane Bancel, the CEO of Moderna, exercised stock options that netted him nearly $393 million last year. Then, the company famous for its coronavirus vaccine, boosted his pay even more, raising his salary to $1.5 million, our colleague Daniel Gilbert reports.
Now, some analysts are raising alarms over the company’s executive pay and governance after the blockbuster success of the company’s vaccine supercharged its stock prices and made billionaires out of its leadership. One influential firm is advising shareholders to vote against the company’s compensation plan at its annual meeting on Wednesday.
A closer look: Bancel owns stock worth at least $2.8 billion and, as of the end of last year, had additional stock-based compensation valued at $1.7 billion. He says he is donating the proceeds of stock sales to charity.
- The company’s windfall profits have drawn criticism, including from members of Congress, particularly because it benefited from $1.7 billion in taxpayer funding and assistance from the National Institutes of Health to help it develop its lifesaving vaccine.
The view from Moderna: The company defends the raises for Bancel and others as “reflective of merit,” pointing out that shareholders have done well and overwhelmingly approved its compensation plan. The pay is “appropriate in light of the increased scope of increasingly global responsibility for Moderna’s executives,” the company said.
State scan
Tennessee adds narrow exceptions to strict abortion ban
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) quietly signed a bill Friday carving out narrow exceptions to the state’s near-total abortion ban, Vivian Jones reports for the Tennessean.
The new law, which took effect immediately, allows doctors to use their “reasonable” medical judgment when deciding whether terminating a pregnancy could save the life of the patient or prevent major injury. Treatment for ectopic and molar pregnancies are also now specifically exempt from the state’s abortion ban.
Previously, the state’s trigger law made it a felony to perform an abortion at any time. Doctors facing criminal charges for performing an abortion in an emergency could argue an “affirmative defense” included in the law, but they shouldered the burden of proof to demonstrate that it was medically necessary, Vivian notes. No physician has been prosecuted thus far.
Meanwhile, across the country …
In Montana: Starting this week, doctors will have to provide prior documentation showing that an abortion is medically necessary before the state’s Medicaid program will authorize payment for the procedure, Amy Beth Hanson writes for the Associated Press.
In Colorado: A federal judge on Friday rejected a Catholic health clinic’s bid to block the state’s recently passed ban on a controversial abortion pill reversal treatment, since prosecutors have already said they will not enforce the law for the time being, the Denver Post’s Sam Tabachnik reports.
Daybook
📅 Happy Monday! The House is out this week, but the Senate has some key hearings on deck. Here’s what we’re watching:
Tuesday: The Senate HELP Committee will markup a bipartisan package of bills aimed at boosting generic drug access and transparency into pharmacy middlemen.
Wednesday: The Senate Finance Committee will examine barriers to mental health care.
Thursday: The Senate HELP Committee will consider the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which needs to be reauthorized by the end of September. Senior Biden health officials, including National Institutes of Health acting director Lawrence Tabak and National Cancer Institute Director Monica Bertagnolli, will testify before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Biden’s fiscal 2024 budget request for NIH.
Health reads
Sugar rush
A "gloriously gluttonous" 40-pound cat named Patches has found a diet partner in his new owner pic.twitter.com/DLqopZ45wY
— CNN (@CNN) April 27, 2023
Thanks for reading! See y'all tomorrow.
